Nadia Benkirane-Jessel's Biography

Nadia Benkirane-Jessel, Research Director, French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM)

Dr. Nadia Jessel is the Leader of the “Active Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering” team at INSERM (French National Institute for Health and Medical Research), UMR 977, Strasbourg. She received her Ph.D. from University Louis Pasteur, ULP, Strasbourg, France for the work on Development of pseudopeptides as synthetic vaccines. Dr. Jessel (Benkirane) then held a postdoctoral position in collaboration with the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France, working on Immunotherapy HIV, and another postdoctoral position on the application of modified peptides as vaccines against FMDV (Plum Island Animal Disease Center, ARS, USDA, Greenport, NY 11944-0848, USA). She joined the INSERM U595 in 2002 as a post-doc, and received the diploma to direct the research (HDR) in 2004. Dr. Jessel got the permanent position (CR1) in the INSERM 595 laboratory in 2004 and currently Research Director (DR2) in the INSERM 977 and heads the team. Dr. Jessel possesses expertise in diverse fields of molecular and cellular biology, immunochemistry, tissue engineering and biomedical engineering. In the last 10 years, she focused her research on the bio-functionalization of multilayered polyelectrolyte architectures with emphasis on the use of these architectures to induce specific cellular responses and gain control over cell proliferation and differentiation. Dr. Benkirane-Jessel is a co-author of 60 peer-reviewed publications in high impact factor journals (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA; Adv. Mater.; Adv. Funct. Mater.; Small; Nanoletters, Biomaterials, ACS Nano), 5 chapters reviews and 4 international patents, she is a regular referee for a number of scientific journals (Nature nanotechnology, Nature Materials, ACS nano, Biomaterials, Nanoletters…). She is under the contract (Interface INSERM/Clinic 2008-2013) and she got also (Prime d’Excellence Scientifique from the INSERM, 2010-2014).